Content contained in this newsletter may have been previously published in prior issues of the QCC newsletter.

The Florida Nursing Home

Quality Care Connection

This QCC Newsletter is your quarterly National Nursing Home Quality Care Collaborative (NNHQCC) in Florida member update that provides information on the latest activities. It is a quick reference for information on upcoming learning events, links to improvement tools, resources, news, best practices, and success stories.

Nursing homes should expect and support effective communication to connect people and build relationships between staff members and residents. Disseminating information in a complete, consistent, and timely manner can help nourish strong teamwork and communication. Consider these strategies:

Implement formal communication between shifts.

Conduct regular staff surveys and share results.

Create opportunities for people across departments to pitch in and break down job silos.

Falls are a serious issue among nursing home residents, and can result in disability, functional decline, and reduced quality of life. Furthermore, a fear of falling can cause a loss of function, depression, feelings of helplessness, and social isolation. Falls can have a variety of causes, including muscle weakness, environmental hazards, and medications.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recommends a number of fall interventions that could be used in nursing home performance improvement projects (PIPs):

Medication review to assess risks and benefits.

Changes in the nursing home environment to help residents move safely (e.g., grab bars, handrails, and lowering bed heights).

The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS)
revised the rules of participation (RoP) for long-term care facilities to include full implementation of Quality Assurance & Performance Improvement (QAPI) in three phases by November 2019.

For QAPI to be successful, it is important to establish a purpose and guiding principles, which describe the organization's beliefs and philosophy pertaining to QAPI. The principles should guide what th organization does, why it does it, and how. This is important because nursing homes are complex organizations, and clear guiding principles can unify the various departments that depend on each other to provide high-quality resident care.

The Nursing Home Training Sessions are a set of trainings aimed to provide nursing home leaders with training materials that can be used to enhance understanding of important concepts and practices that promote stewardship and
C. difficile prevention, and provide information, tools, and resources to take action to improve practices.
Learn more.

This material was prepared by Health Services Advisory Group, the Medicare Quality Improvement Organization for Florida, under contract with the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS), an agency of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. The contents presented do not necessarily reflect CMS policy. Publication No. FL-11SOW-C.2-06272018-02